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Anki Drive combines video games, slot cars and AI

November 13, 2013

These are three of the four cars usable with the Anki Drive game. Photo by Jake Lingeman

The beautiful package that the Anki Drive racing game arrives in could easily be confused for that of a Red Rider BB gun, so if your kid asked Santa Claus for that, don't buy him this for Christmas: he may be disappointed. But if the kid likes cars, toys or video games, we say go for it.

We were admittedly excited when our review package came from Anki. We ripped into it, instantly noting the smell of fresh vinyl or, pool toy, as described by one staffer. The basic package comes with two cars, two chargers, a tire cleaner, the track and an instruction manual. We rolled out the track, opened up the cars and jammed them on the charger to be sure they'd be ready to go after some initial instruction. Within five minutes, we were racing.

When I say “we,” I mean “I,” because I was the one going after the AI cars with the gray and red car named Boson. It has guns, like the others, but it also a tractor beam to pull cars in. Some opponent cars have the same setup, others have a defensive shield instead of the tractor beam.

Photo by Jake Lingeman

The goal in Anki Drive is not to complete laps and win the race. It's more of a deathrace where the point is to blow your opponents away using your iPhone (as of now there is no Android support) as a remote control. A slider on the phone raises and lowers speed while a “fire” button shoots. Leaning the phone one way or the other changes lanes, allowing drivers to either get behind other players or avoid their shots. At the end of the game, the losing cars spin out while the winner goes for an automated victory lap.

The controls take a bit of getting used to, even for an experienced gamer. The buttons on the phone don't have the tactile feel that you get from a PS3 or Xbox controller, and we found ourselves trying to actually steer the car, as opposed to just tilting to switch lanes. And, until you get used to the controls, you have to look back and forth between the phone and the game. However, you can engineer some interesting crashes like when an AI car gets spun and shoots right off the course, which in our case meant a 4-foot fall to the carpet.

It gets more fun as you add more players, both human and AI. Anki hopes that players will pack up their cars and bring them to friends' houses to play. And we could definitely see a four-human-player game getting pretty exciting.

Photo by Jake Lingeman

As you win races and get points, you can spend them on upgrades for the cars, making them faster and more powerful, and upgrading to better weapons. After our first speed upgrade, we started kicking the computer's butt on medium skill level, but never made it up to hard.

We do wish the track had multiple layouts. The included circuit is just an oval with a small kink in one of the sides. If you could design the track, slot-car style, we think it would be a lot more fun, for a longer period of time. Anki did tell us that different track layouts are a possibility in the future.

Overall, Anki Drive does a good job of mixing slot car racing, video games and remote control fun. It's just as rewarding, if not more, than taking on a selection of computer-controlled characters in a driving simulator. Now, if we could just wrangle some groups of four to play the multiplayer version, we'd be in good shape.

This is the slick-looking box that Anki Drive and all its components arrived in. Photo by Jake Lingeman